Bob Margolin: In North Carolina

In North Carolina

Bob Margolin likes playing blues (and did so as Muddy Waters’ longtime guitarist); he has a very attractive baritone voice, notable on a final track here which is just reminiscence of a 1960s -- and continuing -- blues revivalist’s life on the road; and always sings in a key comfortable for his voice, which denies him some distinction as would-be blues singer. John Lee Hooker sang at a very low pitch, so did Lightnin’ Hopkins, but they had very, very deep, almost contrabass, voices. They usually sang in the top octaves available to them. Margolin’s different vocal approach gives his performances a different character from traditional blues. On this home-compiled set, he uses overdubbing to combine guitars and bass and percussion as the only performer. The opener’s a bluesabilly item, Memphis-roots-of-Elvis-Presley style. Next comes a not unsentimental song, where his voice is Billy Eckstine-ish, almost soupy. “You Rascal, You” is on the hillbilly side, “Just Before Dawn” demonstrates that where (on a recent reissue) you can hear Junior Wells tell an audience he can’t do the Dean Martin-Perry Como stuff, Bob Margolin could do that stuff extremely well. On Muddy Waters’ relatively obscure “Lonely Man Blues” the singing’s smooth, and on Margolin’s own “She and the Devil”, the voice almost creates a culture-clash with the impeccable acoustic guitar work, using the slide which is plied with great skill elsewhere on this set, and aptly on the deliberately overamplified “Baby, Baby, Baby”, and a version of “Floyd’s Guitar Blues” which alternates between echoes of Texas Swing and Elmore James; (I’d always thought the tune’s deviser, Floyd Smith with the Andy Kirk big band, played a normal electric guitar laid flat, rather than the lap steel guitar Margolin mentions). There’s also a lament for “Colleen” Bob Margolin’s border collie, long lines which once hung bags of money round Peter "Albatross" Green's neck. He duets well with himself. Maybe his echoes of Eckstine and attachment to hearth and home sound more sentimental to a European than to most Americans.

White Hills epic '80s callback
Stop Mute Defeat is a determined march against encroaching imperial darkness; their eyes boring into the shadows for danger but they're aware that blinding lights can kill and distort truth. From "Overlord's" dark stomp casting nets for totalitarian warnings to "Attack Mode", which roars in with the tribal certainty that we can survive the madness if we keep our wits, the record is a true and timely win for Dave W. and Ego Sensation. Martin Bisi and the poster band's mysterious but relevant cool make a great team and deliver one of their least psych yet most mind destroying records to date. Much like the first time you heard Joy Division or early Pigface, for example, you'll experience being startled at first before becoming addicted to the band's unique microcosm of dystopia that is simultaneously corrupting and seducing your ears. - Morgan Y. Evans

The year in song reflected the state of the world around us. Here are the 70 songs that spoke to us this year.

70. The Horrors - "Machine"

On their fifth album V, the Horrors expand on the bright, psychedelic territory they explored with Luminous, anchoring the ten new tracks with retro synths and guitar fuzz freakouts. "Machine" is the delicious outlier and the most vitriolic cut on the record, with Faris Badwan belting out accusations to the song's subject, who may even be us. The concept of alienation is nothing new, but here the Brits incorporate a beautiful metaphor of an insect trapped in amber as an illustration of the human caught within modernity. Whether our trappings are technological, psychological, or something else entirely makes the statement all the more chilling. - Tristan Kneschke

"...when the history books get written about this era, they'll show that the music community recognized the potential impacts and were strong leaders." An interview with Kevin Erickson of Future of Music Coalition.

Last week, the musician Phil Elverum, a.k.a. Mount Eerie, celebrated the fact that his album A Crow Looked at Me had been ranked #3 on the New York Times' Best of 2017 list. You might expect that high praise from the prestigious newspaper would result in a significant spike in album sales. In a tweet, Elverum divulged that since making the list, he'd sold…six. Six copies.

Under the lens of cultural and historical context, as well as understanding the reflective nature of popular culture, it's hard not to read this film as a cautionary tale about the limitations of isolationism.

I recently spoke to a class full of students about Plato's "Allegory of the Cave". Actually, I mentioned Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" by prefacing that I understood the likelihood that no one had read it. Fortunately, two students had, which brought mild temporary relief. In an effort to close the gap of understanding (perhaps more a canyon or uncanny valley) I made the popular quick comparison between Plato's often cited work and the Wachowski siblings' cinema spectacle, The Matrix. What I didn't anticipate in that moment was complete and utter dissociation observable in collective wide-eyed stares. Example by comparison lost. Not a single student in a class of undergraduates had partaken of The Matrix in all its Dystopic future shock and CGI kung fu technobabble philosophy. My muted response in that moment: Whoa!

Allen Ginsberg and Robert Lowell at St. Mark's Church in New York City, 23 February 1977

Scholar Christopher Grobe crafts a series of individually satisfying case studies, then shows the strong threads between confessional poetry, performance art, and reality television, with stops along the way.

Tracing a thread from Robert Lowell to reality TV seems like an ominous task, and it is one that Christopher Grobe tackles by laying out several intertwining threads. The history of an idea, like confession, is only linear when we want to create a sensible structure, the "one damn thing after the next" that is the standing critique of creating historical accounts. The organization Grobe employs helps sensemaking.